A British tourist who lost part of her leg after she was run over by a taxi on
her first day in New York, has spoken for the first time about how her life
was "turned upside down".

Sian Green, 24, a Hugo Boss employee and part-time model, was run over by a yellow cab while eating a hot dog outside the Rockefeller Centre in Manhattan, after arriving for a holiday with her best friend just hours earlier.

“We came here thinking we were just coming on a holiday, and then it’s like been a whirlwind and it’s just turned (everything) upside down," she told NBC's Today programme in her first television interview since the crash.

Miss Green, of Leicester, was struck by Faysal Kabir Mohammad Himon – who was not licensed to drive the cab he was using.

Miss Green on the show. (NBC)

The cab driver accepted a 30-day license suspension after the wreck, but says the crash was not his fault. An angry bike messenger banged on his car, he told authorities, which startled him into hitting his gas pedal and running up on the curb.

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The car mounted the pavement before careering into Miss Green – who was walking with her friend Keshia Warren.

Miss Green, who was recently released from Bellevue Hospital in New York where she was receiving treatment, she said she was nervous to go back out on the city streets.

Miss Green appeared on the morning talk show wearing a pink dress cut just above the bandage around her severed left limb. She said: “It takes me back a little bit,” she said. “Even when I see a yellow car.”

For the past five weeks, Green has been undergoing intense physical therapy to learn how to maneuver with the missing limb.

Dozens of passersby promptly came to the woman's aid including Mohamed Elsayed, a 34-year-old food seller on the same square, who rushed over with a cooler full of ice with which to pack the woman's severed left leg.

The woman was also assisted by Dr Mehmet Oz, a well-known American television medic, who happened to be in the area.

Miss Green, who smiled throughout her brief, three-minute interview, said there was one thing she had taken away from the accident: “that there’s good people in this world, very good people in this world that I can’t thank enough.

“They saved my life. If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be sitting here right now telling this story.”